Publishers Opinion: What People Don’t Realize About the Oil and Gas Industry

Renewable energy relies on oil and gas for its very existence.

There is no renewable energy on the planet that has been built without the use of oil and gas.

Think construction of a wind farm ….and how that energy product requires trucks, cars, transport and clearly gas in tanks to build it.

Think aviation and how it requires oil and gas to make planes, choppers and other carriers as well as fuel them!

Think products and plastics and how they are required in the building of renewable structures like solar panels. Many components are made of… Petroleum.

Even basic office tools like the plastics used in computers require petroleum.
The phone in your hand is made from many types of petroleum plastics!

There is no renewable energy without the use of some type of oil and gas and it’s related products.

Oil and gas is the number one commodity on the planet…Why? Because it is in just about everything we make and in every project we are involved in.

This is not the time of renewable energy. This is the time where oil and gas bridge us to the development of new energy. It is NOT an either-or situation! Both are critical and essential to the other.

Oil and gas is the bridge to solar energy, wind energy, hydropower, geothermal and every other type of renewable energy source. None of them would exist nor could they be constructed and developed without oil and gas fuel and products.

Next time someone argues about oil and gas vs renewables realize it’s a non-issue! These are the facts. There is no renewable energy without oil and gas.

If Canada doesn’t get its priorities straight and focus on its position as being one the most powerful oil and gas producers in the world, we are going to be in really bad shape. Because if we are not supplying the world with oil and gas someone else will take our place and we will no longer hold the ticket to new energy at the levels we could!

Canada is ranked number three in the world of oil-producing nations. We must do everything in our power to maintain that position and to elevate it….which includes pipeline progress.

We must have pipelines that extend to the west and the east of Canada to get our oil to buying markets beyond the US! We can’t rely on the US anymore as our primary buying partner because as we have seen, the US has developed their own resources with their success in the Gulf and the incoming fracking industry. The reality is, they are becoming more energy independent and they need our oil less and less.

Selling oil and gas around the world means that we can diversify our portfolio! We can capitalize on globalization and the selling of oil and gas to the rest of the world from both sides of Canada. This would ensure that oil-producing provinces like Newfoundland are in a primary and powerful position for world oil demand. This would, in turn, create a further exploration and production offshore Newfoundland because more infrastructure, builds more infrastructure … that’s how it works!

We must realize that gas is a cleaner fuel and where there is gas there is oil and all of that must be cumulatively developed in order to sustain our current standard of living in Canada! If we don’t, our standard of living will drop dramatically. It already has the price of oil drop.

We all feel the pinch of a low oil price in Canada. It has affected every single one of us in some way shape or form. Let the drop of oil price be our strongest lesson and our strongest teacher ….in realizing that a nation without oil and gas is crippling to our economy, our livelihood and affects every single one of us.

Think about a nation without oil and gas and how that will stifle every other industry sector that we hope to develop, from renewables to new technology and other incoming industry sectors. Every one of them requires oil and gas to fuel them into existence. Every one of them requires strong financial companies to invest to build and to scale.

We must not throw away our strengths and try to replace it with a new and renewable powered world. It won’t work that way because that’s like trying to win the Olympics in hockey if the players don’t have hockey sticks. It’s like trying to write the number one hit song, without a voice to sing it. It’s like trying to create the best business plan with no financial backing to bring it to life. Get the picture?

We must build on our strengths and that’s how we will bring in the future of new energy! Anything less…. and we will have limited financial resources, tools and funds to elevate ourselves into new methodologies like renewables!

If there’s one smart thing we could do right now, it is to educate our nation about what life would be like if we developed our oil and gas industry to its highest capacity and brought in new energy.

And comparatively we need to educate our people on what life would be like without Canada’s oil and gas production and where Canada would be without it….so we have time to get it right. We would then understand that the outcome would be devastating!

The smartest thing we could do right now is using our PUBLICALLY-funded media channels like CBC to report and educate on these nationally impactful topics rather than write stories that diverts us from the important matters of the day!

The most important and pressing topic of the day is Canada’s oil and gas position and the development of Alberta’s oil and gas which allows us to hold our position as number three in the world of oil-producing nations!

Are we really going to allow environmentalists to stop oil and gas progress at the expense of bringing in our renewable energy? Is that a logical proposition?

In order to ‘really’ understand what’s going on in Canada, we have to look at the big picture and the big impacts and how they link to the future of the prosperity of this nation and the future for our kids.

Like it or not it’s oil and gas that will elevate us to the highest possible level of success.

Oil and gas is the pavement on the road to sustainable energy. It is the necessary fuel that will bring us to a clean energy future. It is the resource that will provide us with a global competitive advantage to sell into world markets and bring us the financial foundation we need in order to bring in emerging sectors like renewables and tech.

As for environmental concerns. EVERY SINGLE INDUSTRY has an environmental footprint, including renewables. Just building those projects impacts the environment in many and varied ways.

The reason why the oil and gas industry is the number one strongest sector on the planet in terms of safety and environmental stewardship is that of its income level.

The fact that the oil and gas industry is lucrative is the exact reason that it has allowed that sector to be environmentally conscious and proactively compliant. Even renewables won’t have that level of income to be that compliant environmentally. Wait until we get the results of renewable energy impacts in terms of their green footprint. They will be right up there with oil and gas and without the resources to be compliant at the level that oil and gas is.

Let’s get educated people. Let’s utilize the media in all it’s various channels to do so.

Let’s be assertive with our resources and don’t let minority voices who are paid with self-interested agendas sway us from our goals. Those minority groups advocating new energy should keep those funds for when their new energy projects come in to play. They are going to need them to be environmentally compliant themselves. It’s a costly business